“Rotten kid” was what Mom called me during my childhood. She thought she was being playful, but to me it was very hurtful. Perhaps I was being difficult, brooding or whining in her eyes, but that didn’t make me rotten. Fruit gets rotten, ucky and discarded — not people.
Mom said when I was a baby and again as a toddler, she and Grandma brought me to get my picture taken. I sat in front of the camera simply taking in the world but not smiling. My grandmother performed all sorts of antics to get the coveted smile. In spite of Grandma’s success, I was labeled rotten because I made her work so hard. I believe I was simply being me, honestly expressing the emotion I was feeling at the time—quietly observing the action around me, feeling introverted, intense, perhaps melancholy, perhaps annoyed. When something funny caught my attention, I laughed. Was that rotten?
If I wasn’t being a “rotten kid,” I was being “difficult” or “too hard on things” or too this or too that. Upon reflection,I believe I am a good person by nature and, at the time, was simply meeting my needs. But to adapt to Mom’s needs, I suppressed what she perceived as difficult behavior. So as long as I was in my good girl role — quiet, flexible, easy to get along with — Mom thought I was a good kid. My shadow side — the dark, difficult, and unpleasant parts of my inner world — became my forbidden fruit.
As an adult, I would have to retrieve, through my art, all that was forbidden.
